César Fernández-Stoll

Versión hispana

Friday, October 8, 2010

The Mosque in Ground Zero

As the urge emerges to compare or equalize the building of a monastery close to the Holocaust of the murdering of millions of Jews during World War II, I don't think the Carmelites had any work on the calamity of the Holocaust, neither I believe, it to be an exclusive Jew sacred place.

As far as the Mosque close to ground zero is concerned, which has no equivalence but to urinating in the pain of so many relatives and friends of the ones perished on 9/11, which by the way was an act of religious freedom, but of the worst order; it should not be permitted.

The Islamic community has many ways to represent themselves and to claim exception from the crime against humanity that took place on September 11, 2001. They seemed to have bypassed all of them. From the celebrations in the streets, the world witnessed, exclusive to the Islamic world, after these poor souls lost in their hate and misguidance threw themselves into hell claiming to be fighting the great Satan while embracing the real one, to many other occasions where they could have simply claim exception in the name of the many innocent in their own communities, exposed to blatant discrimination, doubt and distrust.

Most of us immigrants know that one of the key issues for taking the decision to migrate to foreign lands is to first of all integrate and be a contributing element in the development and prosperity of the host nation. With this of course, we must be aware of the challenges that might be presented before us because of the faith we profess, unless of course, our intention is instead missionary, of ‘converting’ the people of the land into what we believe is the true faith.

It is widely know that the Middle East is literally governed by Islam and its laws which are in many aspects, very different to ours, as individual freedoms virtually do not exist and nor does individual prosperity in a broad sense but mostly exclusive to the dominant elites in the land, lately fed by the money their lands rich on oil produce and of which other cultures are thirsty due to the technological development, they, themselves have chosen to skip.

Religious freedom allows any one to worship whoever they want under the guarantee that the government will not prevent them from doing so. In other words, the government cannot interfere on anybody’s right to worship the god they fell suit to fulfil their own lives.

The worship of Allah is not forbidden in the United States and many Mosques do exist not just across the land but very particularly in New York City. Of course their practitioners are free as well by virtue of the freedom gained by Christians and Jews across history, to erect their places of worship in the lands they own, restricted of course, only by the local zoning laws and so on.

If the Islamic community feels in the need to claim justice for their own people, their own followers and truly pursue peace and understanding, it is not a very good approach to seek funds from the most obscure sources, directly related to the worldwide fight with terror for the imposition of Islam; to buy land adjacent to Ground Zero to build a Mosque which they will ‘honour’ by invoking Cordoba, for the Caliphate in Spain which Osama Bin Laden longs as the vindication of Islam as the only, not one of the powers, but the one power over the world.

Terror is used because dialogue is not accepted and because there is a complete disregard for human life. It is dominance by fear to assimilate and impose.

It’s being said that the Great Mosque in Cordoba, Spain was built over the ruins of a Catholic church, and we all know that a church was built over, not the ruins, the Great Mosque in Cordoba. This is evident because the Great Mosque happens to be one of the main tourist attractions.

In Cusco, Peru, the main temple of the Incas, the temple of Coricancha , which is another main tourist attraction of great beauty, has a church built on top, preserving the beauty of the conquered culture.

These two examples amongst many other over the planet, do not denounce Christian invasion, nevertheless, demonstrating victory of one faith, a failed one over the other.

In Cordoba it’s been said and not reason to doubt it, that the great Moslem population of the re-conquered land by the Catholic King and Queen of the re-emerging Spain, were being ‘respected’ in their worship. However, Islam could not cope with having to share the land with Christians and Jews and social unrest pressure the Kingdom to expel them. The Jews were also expelled but for completely different reasons as they had shared the land with so many others before, not mixing, just sharing. Mixing is only practiced by the agnostic or atheist crowd which sees equivalence with the objective of winning over everyone else while dismissing faith in God by imposing faith only in government or themselves.

There is no fairness nor there is any justice on letting this Mosque to be build so close to truly sacred land, specially for the side of the Moslem population which are truly believers in peace and freedom as they are the ones that are being thrown into the rubble their own leaders have created in the name of a very disputable religion of peace.

The power to prevent this offense to civilization and to peace and love as well as insult to the close to 3,000 victims of many nationalities and origins and their relatives and survivors; is in the hands of the people. It is not as much the responsibility of coward politicians, easy scapegoat for our own weaknesses and frustrations, but that of the people, because they will ultimately be the ones that will make the starting, building and use of this blasphemy, this profanity that serves one and only one purpose and it is to desecrate the memory of the innocent.

To love immigrants is to let them be participants of the culture they are adopting not to let them impose their culture to the extreme of allowing them to offend the memory of the ones living and trying to make freedom to flourish and prosper.